100 FICTION A HEAR.T 15 SUCH A HEAVY THING RUN KARAN had just turned ,... twenty-four when he decided that he would marry the chubby round- faced girl he had never met. Four . - \t months ago, he had got his first job, as a bookkeeper for Toyota Tonics. With his newemploy- ment, and its endless supply of tonic, he had taken to drinking many bottles of the sugary stuff every da Arun, finally a man, a man with a job, decided that it was time he gained some weight. And, finally a man, a man with a job, Arun agreed to his father's pleas to consider marriage. And so, late one evening, the word went around that Arun was look- ing for a wife, and in no time he and his family were playing host to a proceSSIon of fathers, almost all of them strangers, who appeared, one after another, bear- ing black-and-white photographs of their daughters in various poses and with varying degrees of ugliness. This went on for three months. And then one day Vinod Mishra, the father of Vibha, ap- peared. Vibha, Arun could see, was not ugly; just fat-and she had, as well, a siz- able dowry, and Arun threw up his hands and said, "Why not? I get along with everyone. So why not her?" Arun Karan was still twenty-four, but he was now a twenty-four-year-old with a job and a fiancee. (The wedding would be next month.) And, finally, he was starting to gain some weight. What he now needed was a better job-that was just the thing before he got married-and his father, Ram Karan, had just the so- lution: he would make his son a teacher. '- Ram Karan wanted his son to meet Mr. Gupta, Ram Karan's supervisor and the head of the physical-education de- The romance of newlyweds. BY AKHIL SHAR.MA partment at the Delhi municipality where they both worked. Mr. Gupta was a man of influence, and had prom- ised that he might be able to do some- thing for Ram Karan's son. There was to be a wedding reception at Mr. Guptàs home for his son, Narayan. Strings of small blue and red light bulbs hung three stories down the front of the Gupta house. Mr. Gupta stood at the gates of the courtyard greeting guests. Behind him waiters in red turbans, white jackets, and white pants moved among the visitors. Electric fans, five feet tall, stood every few steps along the courtyard's walls. Arun and his father were there to offer their congratulations. "You want to be a teacher, Arun?" Mr. Gupta asked. The answer was so obvious that Arun wondered whether he was being teased. Mr. Gupta had already made his promise. The only reason Ram Karan had brought Arun to the party was to make Mr. Gupta feel obligated to keep his word. ""'\7 " Aru . d les, n sal . "Mr. Gupta can help," Ram Karan said. "I can try," Mr. Gupta said modestl "If you knew all the people Mr. Gupta knew, you would go mad," Ram Karan said. Arun's father could flatter people so extravagantly that he stopped making sense. "Your father compliments me five times a day, like a Muslim saying his prayers," Mr. Gupta said. , Most Muslims are far from Mecca, while I sit just down the hall from you," Ram Karan replied. Mr. Gupta laughed. "See how far shamelessness will take you." A couple arrived behind them. The man wore a kurta pajama, and the woman had on a dress. A cosmopolitan mixture, Arun thought. Ram Karan raised his voice to make sure they heard: "All Mr. Gupta has to do is look at someone and the person gets a job, a wife, a government flat." He nodded at his own words "Go in, Mr. Karan," Mr. Gupta said, gesturing. Ram Karan took a folded envelope with a hundred and one rupees inside and gave it to l\IIr. Gupta. "For your son's new life," he said, and shook Mr. Guptàs hand one more time. As they stepped into the courtyard, Ram Karan, who was fat and bald ex- cept for a ridge of hair on either side of his scalp, slipped an arm around Arun's waist. "That is how you speak to power- ful people, F atso," he said. "They know you're exaggerating, but they like it, and you keep your pride because you also know you're exaggerating." The rich, his father was always say- ing, may be better or smarter, but there are still ways to make them do what you want. Near the courtyard they met Mrs. Chauduri, the municipality's senior ju- nior physical-education officer. She was short-very, very short-but, in fact, just tall enough, technically; not to be a dwarf: ' untiji, how is your health?" Arun asked. "It is as God wills," Mrs. Chauduri sighed. Two years earlier, she had un- dergone a double mastectom "God is testing you," Arun said. The phrase pleased him, and he could see that Mrs. Chauduri was flattered by it. ' d you will pass," his father added. A waiter edged by, and Ram Karan exclaimed, "Tonight, I will drink only whiske " Other physical-education officers be- gan gathering around them. They, like Arun and his father, wore only shirts and pants. Nearly all the other men in the courtyard, Arun notIced, were wear- ing suits. At some pOInt, Ram Karan decided to declare the closeness of his relationship